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34th Season of Plays for and about Hawai`i.
With this outstanding season, our commitment to producing
plays for and about Hawai`i continues. Below are descriptions of
each play along with scheduled performance dates.
 TERRITORIAL PLAYS:
Cane Fire
by Kathryn
S. Bond
Reunion
by Lisa
Toishigawa Inouye
In the Alley
by Edward
Sakamoto
Territorial Plays Main Page
Read the Viewer's
Guide for the Territorial Plays (pdf)
Three short plays originally produced in the 30s, 40s, and
60s take Kumu audiences back for a look at plantation workers, World
War II veterans, and disaffected local youth of early statehood days in
Hawai‘i. Cane Fire tells the story of a Scots
plantation manager whose attempts to place blame for a canefield fire
reveal the political machinations and racial attitudes of Hawai‘i in
1930. Kumu Kahua’s production is the play’s world premiere.
Reunion comically portrays the predicament of
veterans who still have not found themselves after a year at home.
First produced in 1947, it was praised for its affectionate reflection
of familiar realities as well as its use of pidgin dialogue.
In the Alley, an early work by Edward Sakamoto,
whose comedies and dramas have been regularly produced by Kumu
Kahua, is a classic dramatization of the dynamics of racial conflict
in Hawai‘i. It was originally produced by the UH Theatre group
at Farrington Hall in 1961, and revived by Kumu Kahua at Kennedy Lab
Theatre in 1974.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8pm: September 2, 3,
4, 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 30; October 1, 2, 2004
Sundays 2pm: September 5, 12, 19, 26; October 3, 2004
 Half Dozen Long Stem
by Lee Cataluna
Half Dozen Long Stem Main
Page
Kumu Kahua premieres another new work by playwright,
screenwriter, actor and newspaper columnist Lee Cataluna. Having viewed
life in Hawai‘i through the eyes of cable television station employees
on Kaua‘i, fisherfolk on Maui, politicians on the Big Island and
workers and customers at Long’s Drug Stores on O‘ahu, Cataluna now
cultivates her distinctive brand of local humor in new soil – a
Honolulu flower and lei shop. The colorful cast of characters includes
Mrs. Fujiuchi, the shop owner, who doesn’t like her employees to smell
the flowers because she’s convinced they’ll lose their scents; Romell,
a flamboyant delivery man who loves to read the gift cards and gossip
about their contents; Nornette, a sales clerk who bursts into tears at
the slightest provocation; Bertram, a customer who appears to be
sending flowers to several women at the same time; and June, a big
bruiser with a soft spot for flowers. The comic action kicks into high
gear when the building owners decide to sell and close down the shop.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8pm: November 4, 5, 6, 11, 12,
13, 18, 19, 20, 26, 27; December 2, 3, 4, 2004
Sundays 2pm: November 7, 14, 21, 28; December 5, 2004
 Christmas Talk Story 2004
by a range of local writers including, Diane Aoki,
E. Shan Correa, Rochelle delaCruz, Yokanaan Kearns, Kaiulani E.S.
Kidani, Lori & Erik Okamura, Ruta Pei, Wendy Pollitt, Dot Saurer,
Gary Tachiyama, Linda Tagawa, Janice Terukina, Lee Tonouchi, Cedric
Yamanaka, and Y. York.
Fun for the whole family and filled with Christmas memories,
original songs and holiday standards, Christmas Talk Story will take
you on a “small-kid-time” journey through Christmastime in
Hawai‘i. A coproduction with
Honolulu Theatre for Youth.
View the
Christmas Talk Story Poster (pdf)
Saturdays 3:30pm & 7:30pm: November 27; December 4, 11,
18, 2004
Sundays 3:30pm: November 28; December 5, 12, 19, 2004
David Carradine NOT
Chinese
by Darrell H.Y. Lum
David
Carradine NOT Chinese Main Page
Sixteen-year-old
Truman Wat and his twelve-year-old brother
Lincoln aren’t the only family members with famous names. Their father
is Rutger and their two uncles are Stanford and Princeton. This
collection of characters takes us on a comic journey through
contemporary Hawai‘i and 20th-century American media from the Charlie
Chan movies to Hawai‘i Five-O and the television series Kung
Fu (which starred David Carradine as a Shaolin priest), as well as
comic book superheroes, the Lawrence Welk show, the Ed
Sullivan show and the
cowboy stylings of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Playwright Lum, who
has a talent for dealing with serious issues in a lighthearted style,
is at his comic best in this tale of convoluted racial stereotypes
(“David
Carradine not Chinese. Charlie Chan not Chinese. The real Chinese have
always been number two--Number One Son, Master Po, even Kam Fong”),
local
attitudes and pun-ridden dialogue, culminating in a hilarious evening
at the Wat-Chu Society annual banquet. This play was commissioned by
Kumu Kahua.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8pm: January 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21,
22, 27, 28, 29; February 3, 4, 5, 2005
Sundays
2pm: January 9, 16, 23, 30, 2005
Eddie Would Go &
Queen of Makaha (Rell Sunn)
by Bryan
Wake
Eddie Would Go and Queen of Makaha
(Rell Sunn) Main Page
Read the Eddie and Rell
Viewer's Guide (pdf)
KKT
has teamed up once again with Honolulu Theatre for Youth
to bring you two great plays. These two plays bring the lives of
two of Hawai‘i’s most
famous surfers, Eddie Aikau and Rell Sunn, on to the stage. Eddie
Would Go , first produced by HTY in its 1997-98 season, features
four young surfers who recount key episodes in the life of Eddie Aikau
in an interactive stage show which includes the audience playing the
ocean.
Rell
Sunn was a pioneer in women’s surfing, the first female
lifeguard on the west side of O‘ahu, mother, hula dancer, radio DJ, and
UH graduate in cultural anthropology. Queen of Makaha
dramatizes a time
in her life when she was in Texas receiving chemotherapy for cancer.
Her
roommate, Shelley, is in her late teens and, in her adverse
relationship
with her mother, comes to remind Rell of her relationship with her own
daughter. The two women, both dying from cancer and suffering from the
debilitating effects of chemotherapy treatments, end up helping one
another.
Check
these HTY links for more information:
Eddie
Would Go
and
Queen of
Makaha.
Honolulu
Theatre for Youth, celebrating their 50th anniversary, is Hawaii’s
non-profit
professional theatre company providing theatre and drama education
programs that make a difference in the lives of Hawaii’s young people
and families. Founded in 1955, HTY is recognized the world over as one
of America’s most honored theatres. Visit HTY on the web at www.htyweb.org.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8pm: February 24, 25, 26; March 3, 4, 5,
10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 2005
Saturday
& Sunday 2pm: February 26, 27; March 5, 6, 12,
13, 19, 20, 26, 27, 2005
 Ventriloquist
by Mark D. Tjarks
Ventriloquist main page
This
first play by Mark D. Tjarks presents a volatile and
highly theatrical cocktail of music, tape-recorded encounters, and tart
home-truths from an endearing but ill-adjusted couple. John, a local
Japanese, and Sandy, a mainland East Coast haole, try to resolve their
increasing problems with the aid of a marriage counselor, the
African-Italian Roz. Drawn into the therapy is their daughter Chelsea,
a Punahou student dipping into
romance and 'wigger' culture with her teenage haole boyfriend, a Kahala
cardiologist's son. As the therapy proceeds, it
clusters more and more around controlling grandmother figures; and John
and Roz are finally forced to confront painful secrets from their pasts
which have a shattering effect on themselves and those close to them.
Thursday,
Friday and Saturday 8pm: May 12, 13, 14, 19, 20,
21, 26, 27, 28; June 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 2005
Sundays
2pm: May 15, 22, 29; June 5, 12, 2005
Plays from the 2003-2004
season
Plays from 2002-2003 Season
Plays from 2001-2002 Season
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